Live 8 - any signs ?

adventurepants_ · Post by **adventurepants_** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 1:00 am

i just wish they would concentrate on the Live stuff and ditch the arrangement enhancements. To me tracking in Reaper is a million times easier than in Live.

but Live is fooking awesome for jamming and looping and running crazy fx racks, those to me are its strengths. If they made midi work properly, it could finally be the centre of a Live hardware jamming and control centre. It is a very fragile program, and is absolutely the pickiest when it comes to hardware configurations. Live is the only program I use that feels sluggish on a quad core. Reaper screams, even when running lots of plugins, and the interface is snappy. In a 3mb install file. Live cant compete with these programs for tracking and arranging, Im not sure why its bothering.

Live 8 = Native Looping, tight as hell midi timing, better library management, better control of ext hardware, and rewrite the sluggish graphics engine.

whos with me??

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 1:09 am

adventurepants_ wrote:i just wish they would concentrate on the Live stuff and ditch the arrangement enhancements. To me tracking in Reaper is a million times easier than in Live.

but Live is fooking awesome for jamming and looping and running crazy fx racks, those to me are its strengths. If they made midi work properly, it could finally be the centre of a Live hardware jamming and control centre. It is a very fragile program, and is absolutely the pickiest when it comes to hardware configurations. Live is the only program I use that feels sluggish on a quad core. Reaper screams, even when running lots of plugins, and the interface is snappy. In a 3mb install file. Live cant compete with these programs for tracking and arranging, Im not sure why its bothering.

Live 8 = Native Looping, tight as hell midi timing, better library management, better control of ext hardware, and rewrite the sluggish graphics engine.

whos with me??

+1

Dan Dare · Post by **Dan Dare** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 1:18 am

adventurepants_ wrote:i just wish they would concentrate on the Live stuff and ditch the arrangement enhancements.
whos with me??

I'm with ya apart from the above bit 'ditching arrangement enhancements', enhancements are good.

lola · Post by **lola** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 2:45 am

Can't live without arrange...
As u stated reaper is easier.... hope the abes make the arrange easier then, instead of ditchin it

condra · Post by **condra** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:10 am

That said, my money would be on a January NAMM 2009 announcement

I think it will be sooner.

It's almost October already. This time one year ago, Live 7 was being beta tested and announced.

1 year is a long time in software, and as Forge pointed out, they have staff to pay, and Christmas is a crucual time of year in retail.

Personally, I expect we will hear news some time around October.

They have been very tight lipped on the subject of the next version of Live, aswell as the partnership with Cycling 74, so I can understand why people are feeling a bit "left in the dark".

FWIW, I'm looking forward to Live 8, especially the new instrument "Bok" which is a chicken emulator, appearantly.

nowtime · Post by **nowtime** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:23 am

All that content they released last time (and re-packaged synths) was a bit dissapointing of a turn - Orchestral Libraries and the like - aiming at some kind of Logic competition.

It would be a sweet treat to be blown away by an exciting turn in direction in their marketing and focus.

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:38 am

condra wrote: FWIW, I'm looking forward to Live 8, especially the new instrument "Bok" which is a chicken emulator, appearantly.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:52 am

nowtime wrote: It would be a sweet treat to be blown away by an exciting turn in direction in their marketing and focus.

Hell yes! It's a sort of eye opener for me to realize that for what I do with Live, I could have stuck with 4, if Apple computer upgrades hadn't pushed 5. 6 and 7 were upgrades simply because it's important to me that Ableton stay in business.

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 7:04 am

adventurepants_ wrote:i just wish they would concentrate on the Live stuff and ditch the arrangement enhancements. To me tracking in Reaper is a million times easier than in Live.

but Live is fooking awesome for jamming and looping and running crazy fx racks, those to me are its strengths. If they made midi work properly, it could finally be the centre of a Live hardware jamming and control centre. It is a very fragile program, and is absolutely the pickiest when it comes to hardware configurations. Live is the only program I use that feels sluggish on a quad core. Reaper screams, even when running lots of plugins, and the interface is snappy. In a 3mb install file. Live cant compete with these programs for tracking and arranging, Im not sure why its bothering.

Reaper is nicely done indeed... BUT all the versions I tried so far (including the very latest one as I write) have had unexplained crashes on my Win XP SP2 system.

For me that is unacceptable - stability is absolutely of key importance. Live's Arrangement has that (having used it almost daily since Live 2, it has NEVER once crashed). That is so much more important in fact, in spite of Reaper's feature elegance.

So provided Ableton retain this level of stability that I have enjoyed all these years, I am very happy for them to add new stuff that will make Live even better

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 7:12 am

headquest wrote: (having used it almost daily since Live 2, it has NEVER once crashed).

wow you've been lucky!

Sibanger · Post by **Sibanger** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 7:37 am

adventurepants_ wrote:i just wish they would concentrate on the Live stuff and ditch the arrangement enhancements. To me tracking in Reaper is a million times easier than in Live.

but Live is fooking awesome for jamming and looping and running crazy fx racks, those to me are its strengths. If they made midi work properly, it could finally be the centre of a Live hardware jamming and control centre. It is a very fragile program, and is absolutely the pickiest when it comes to hardware configurations. Live is the only program I use that feels sluggish on a quad core. Reaper screams, even when running lots of plugins, and the interface is snappy. In a 3mb install file. Live cant compete with these programs for tracking and arranging, Im not sure why its bothering.

Live 8 = Native Looping, tight as hell midi timing, better library management, better control of ext hardware, and rewrite the sluggish graphics engine.

whos with me??

Sign me up!

I'd happily pay for these enhancements, but they really should be included
in a bug fix. Maybe the midi timing issue cannot be fixed.

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:12 am

forge wrote:
headquest wrote: (having used it almost daily since Live 2, it has NEVER once crashed).
wow you've been lucky!

Probably yes. I guess that with any software release there are all sorts of configurations that may or may not work, and its a relief that for me things have been smooth. I think that's why its always important to demo stuff thoroughly on your own system...

At least with a larger company like Ableton they try to test on a wide range of systems so can sort out the worst bugs; also the public betas help (I took part in a couple of those). With Reaper I know that others using M-Audio firewire stuff have had problems like mine, but the developers are only a small team and are unable to test on everything... so the hardware specific problems are not always solved so quickly. Plus the crashes I have had with Reaper are somewhat random, so difficult to replecate. Anyway, I guess that more people working on support is partly what you pay for with a bigger company.

That's not to say I have never had any issues with Live at all - I had bad CPU spikes in Live 4 initially, not solved for the first few months. I think since Live 5 there hasn't been anything specific though.

Also of course I do have LOTS of feature requests, but that's different from bugs/etc.

Daim · Post by **Daim** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:48 am

try NI-Software.. they have the talent to crash any sequencer on the market

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 11:35 am

headquest wrote:
forge wrote:
headquest wrote: (having used it almost daily since Live 2, it has NEVER once crashed).
wow you've been lucky!
Probably yes. I guess that with any software release there are all sorts of configurations that may or may not work, and its a relief that for me things have been smooth. I think that's why its always important to demo stuff thoroughly on your own system...

At least with a larger company like Ableton they try to test on a wide range of systems so can sort out the worst bugs; also the public betas help (I took part in a couple of those). With Reaper I know that others using M-Audio firewire stuff have had problems like mine, but the developers are only a small team and are unable to test on everything... so the hardware specific problems are not always solved so quickly. Plus the crashes I have had with Reaper are somewhat random, so difficult to replecate. Anyway, I guess that more people working on support is partly what you pay for with a bigger company.

That's not to say I have never had any issues with Live at all - I had bad CPU spikes in Live 4 initially, not solved for the first few months. I think since Live 5 there hasn't been anything specific though.

Also of course I do have LOTS of feature requests, but that's different from bugs/etc.

funny - I often find quite ironically that the bigger problems with bugs are often with bigger companies because they are not as in touch with the user base

Take Sony for example - I use Vegas and there is a HORRIBLE bug where I basically can't use undo if ripple is set to all tracks/markers/regions - I get a nasty buzz and have to restart it

I reported it on the forum and got told it must be my system and maybe my drivers were out of date, and reported it to Sony through an impersonal web form that I never got a reply to

That is not the way it usually works with Ableton - we certainly don't get replies to every single bug, but you often do, especially on the forum and during beta phases

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 2:21 pm

Yes, I would say in my experience that the Middle-Sized companies like Ableton and Propellerhead are the most responsive. They seem small enough to be in touch as you put it, but large enough to have/commit resources to solving the thing. Not always, but often